modern british theatredid not really exist in any significant form before 1956
... Modern British Theatre did not really exist in any significant form before 1956 Formal theatre censorship in England dates from 1543, and was principally religious in its motivation, inspired by fears that the theatre might stimulate Catholic resistance to Protestantism and thereby pose threats to the stability of the state. A more recent system of censorship of the London stage dates from 1901, when the Edwardian age began and continued to dominate British theatre until 1968. From 1737 the text of any play to be performed before a public audience in the United Kingdom had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain. ... As a definitive statement relating to the change in attitude and outlook of Modern British theatre after 1956, I feel compelled to agree with the above statement. Although I believe it to be rather crude in tone, events that happened within British Theatre from around 1956 onwards unquestionably changed the face of theatre as we know it today. ... Modern British theatre could not exist as we know it today if The Stage Licensing Act of 1737 had not been lifted in 1968. Although the Act had been relaxed somewhat by this time, the senior members of the royal household were still more concerned with saving their own political skins than allowing British playwrights the freedom of speech and expression that they sorely deserved. ... British theatre was very behind the times as far as experimentation and development went. ... It was not unlike an evening of television designed first and foremost to make money and to entertain with the likelihood of continuing to make more money. Nineteenth Century British theatre was almost exclusively commercial and central to popular culture and entertainment. ... William Hazlitt remarked on a production of A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, “The boards of a theatre and the regions of fancy are not the same thing”. The Victorians had a romantic visionary definition of dramatic poetry which demanded a stage that should strive to lose its identity in order to accommodate this absolute illusion and make the spectators forget for as much as possible of their time in the theatre that they knew a world more real than that placed before them on the stage. ... So, although Grein and his Independent theatre were taking a step in the right direction, the fact that the company was fuelled by European works still didn’t do much for the development of home-grown, British theatre. ... With great pioneering minds such as Stanislavski and Chekov leading the great Moscow movement of 1904 with fresh, innovative plays such as “The Cherry Orchard”, Britain was clearly unwilling at the time to join in and be a part of significant theatrical and philosophical change.